How Does protectlinks.com Work?

A number of posters here seem to use www.protectlinks.com to mask the URL of a download. That seems to be jolly sensible, but I just cannot work out what I ought to be doing to get the pre-encrypted URL.

For example, a file I'd like to download is shown at https://www.forumophilia.com/topic102947.html#1390112 as being available from http://www.protectlinks.com/238277, but all I get from that and other protectlinks URLs is a 404 error page.

So, is it a bit more complex to get the pre-encrypted URL than to simply click the link provided? If so, what secret am I missing?

protectlinks.com had finished some sort of maintenance during the last few days (or weeks?!?), maybe this is the reason for some not working links now.

Monkey D. Ruffy

The site have been completly inaccesible for about three days.
Due to maintenance they claim.
From what I gather it seem like every old link stored with them are gone.
I have personally given them time until Tuesday to have the links repaired.
If they are still inaccesible by then I will have to try and remember where I have posted links with them and go back to modify the posts.
Maybee 150-200 posts to change. Sigh.
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[URL=http://www.casimages.com][/URL]

Looks like they got it working again, for now anyway.

good illustration of why we need at least two of all "gadgets"

I have gone back to posting a RSM and PL links (in that order, RSM is less fractious that PL)

As some will know RSM suffered similar instability problems this week that PL was suffering a couple of weeks ago